In the Blues

We're back in internet land!

I posted awhile ago on Facebook that we were hanging out on a mountain in Northeastern Oregon in homage to John's favorite childhood memories. Seriously, one of the first stories he told me when we met was about how he was born August 1st and deer season started six weeks later, so he had been hunting in the Blue Mountains his entire life. I wasn't quite sure what I was getting into at that point, but as the years have passed I have noticed that when he talks about hunting in the Blues his voice changes and he smiles in a way that tells me that he is seeing images in his head from decades ago. I love the joy that his memories of hunting with his extended family bring him, and it was so sweet to see how excited he was to do the same thing (spend hunting season -- from rifle buck to second elk -- in the Blue Mountains) with our kids. 

An unexpected 'cold snap' and snow front and Army logistics made it so that we had to leave a few days short of the end of second elk season, but we spent nearly two months camping on Buck Mountain (here's the super shout out to the family who supported us with water and grocery runs, and John's uncle who served faithfully as a full service laundry-doer!).

It was easy to see why John's memories are so sweet. In fair weather the kids had days of running around in the woods with their cousins, entertaining themselves with sticks and dirt and leaves and elusive squirrels. At night they bundled up in the camper while the adult cousins sat around the campfire solving the worlds problems. Gunnar and Patton woke up every morning and went on a squirrel hunt around the camp. P mastered her chipmunk call. G got so much trigger time that I'm pretty sure he can now out shoot most newly graduated basic trainees. More hot dogs and marshmallows were roasted than I care to count and more dirt was washed off these kids than you can imagine. 

When the cousins had to return to work and their normal lives we spent our days schooling and our evenings reading and playing games. The lack of a external schedule and social obligations (and electronics) was such a blessing. We took walks on nice days and naps on rainy days. We took long drives to the places John remembered camping and hunting with his family as a kid. It was amazing, but enough with the words. On with the pictures...

 Cooking breakfast! Rifle buck season started before we were found the camper we wanted, so we loaded up our pop-up camper and drug it up to the mountains. Fitting a family of six in there was quite the experience in making the most of the space you have. Also, this is about a week into our time in the mountains. This may be the last picture in which we'll ever see John's cheeks.

 Morning meeting.

 Queen of the Mountain...

 falls asleep on the 4-wheeler.

 Shooting practice.

 Some days it's tough to be the queen of the mountain. 

 My favorite thing about the spot where we camped was how the morning light came through the trees. So beautiful.

Predictably, we saw A LOT of deer. Also predictably, I never had my camera ready.

 See what I mean about the sun? 

We camped not far from the Whitman Route (in the Whitman-Wallowa National Forest), so we did a unit study and lap book on the Oregon Trail. We read some great books (our favorite was Apples to Oregon, a tall tale on how fruit trees were brought to Oregon. We highly recommend it for Oregon Trail studies.), Gunnar found a new hero in Daniel Boone, and they both loved learning about history that they could reference geographically.

We've also been able to spend time in John's tiny hometown of Athena. This, of course, is always interesting because if I take John somewhere it always takes me twice as long to get anything done because he runs into six people that he hasn't seen since he left for the Army and they'd like a brief overview of what he's been doing for the last 15 years. If I go by myself people who I don't know stare at me oddly because they've seen my picture on Facebook or they recognize the miniature Johns trailing behind me, but they're not quite sure.

Really, though, we love this little community where we run into family randomly everyday, everybody knows everybody, and people look at me oddly when I take my kids somewhere in the middle of a school day.

We have just about two weeks before we load up and head west, so we are taking some local field trips and randomly dropping in on as many people we love as possible. 

Friends, the pictures are going to get serious :)